ArtAsiaPacific Sep/Oct 2015

For the September/October issue of ArtAsiaPacific, we look at artists who extend the vocabulary of their given practices—through the use of a specific material or by adopting a range of strategies and styles, both old and new—to communicate their ideas, often in novel, unexpected ways. We begin with New Delhi-based Bengali artist and poet Mithu Sen, whose graffiti-inspired painting I Cunt Imagine (2010) is featured on our cover. AAP contributing editor Jyoti Dhar considers the power behind Sen’s surrealistic imagery and text-based practice. Exploring universal notions of gender and beauty, Sen employs a variety of means, from watercolor paintings and collaged readymades to video and spoken-word performances. As Dhar notes, “Fearless, vulgar and antagonistic, Mithu Sen’s work has a way of stopping you in your tracks.” Similarly challenging expectations, although active…

In the tumultuous era surrounding the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition, an artist tuned in to his love for humanity In 2011, I was invited to Mumbai for a solo exhibition curated by Veerangana Solanki at the Guild. It was my first trip to India and I was fortunate enough to be hosted by Veerangana and her loving family. At their home in Bansda, in the western state of Gujarat, I came upon a series of paintings of the Hindu god Lord Krishna hanging in her grandfather’s room. I was immediately drawn to the ethereal blue figure portrayed on these canvases. Krishna’s otherworldly gaze is engaged yet detached and his gestures are playful yet sacred—the gentleness and tender expressions of these portraits were unlike any I had seen before. In one painting,…

Bringing the world to Dhaka and Dhaka to the world Throughout much of the world, Bangladesh is associated with poverty, floods, famines, civil war and perilous labor conditions. Bangladeshi contemporary art has largely evaded international attention. In recent years, however, the nation is catching up with its South Asian neighbors and taking a seat at the table of global contemporary art. Dhaka, the national capital and the 10th largest city on the planet with 18 million people, is the center of an emerging Bangladeshi contemporary art scene. In 1948, father of Bangladeshi art Zainul Abedin (1914–1976) founded the Faculty of Fine Arts (locally known as Charukola) at Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s oldest and most influential art college. Also an important cultural site, Charukola was a meeting place prior to and during…

A satirical graphic novel by a local illustrator has sparked the latest debate over censorship in Singapore, a city-state torn between aspirations for artistic-hub status and unyielding political and moral censorship laws. One day before the May 30 release of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Malaysian-born, Singapore-based comic artist Sonny Liew, the country’s National Art Council (NAC) retracted a SGD 8,000 (USD 5,800) grant on the grounds that the book “undermines the authority or legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions.” Due to what the NAC declared “sensitive content,” the publisher of the 316-page parody, independent Singapore-based Epigram Books, must return the financial aid it was awarded in January 2014. Last year, the council conferred upward of USD 4.1 million in awards to dozens of projects…

How the world has changed since Seditionart.com was founded three years ago! When I first started thinking about the company in the 1990s, the idea of a digital, limited-edition artwork was seen as bizarre; “digital edition” seemed a contradiction in terms. Today, digital is a medium no less commonplace than oil-on-canvas, and for the pioneering artists of this category, a burgeoning new infrastructure is opening up to support them. That’s where Sedition comes in. One original motivation to create this company was our awareness of a growing number of artists utilizing digital elements in their practice. It seemed natural to try to provide a platform for artists to present those works to the world—or at least to the online world. The traditional routes for showing and selling artworks were not…

As the second half of the art-world calendar gets underway, many art professionals will find themselves staring at a clean slate. In the cutthroat auction industry, Christie’s—believed to be the fairest of them all—is witnessing a number of key rainmakers tendering their resignations. Hong Kong’s dashing young Edward Tang, who had been heading the auction house’s edgy First Open sales of contemporary art from New York, was poached by former Christie’s chairwoman Amy Cappellazzo to join her year-old independent outfit, Art Agency, Partners. This metamorphosis was followed by the flight of highly respected longtime Asian contemporary art specialist Ingrid Dudek, who bid farewell to Christie’s main headquarters in Rockefeller Center. But the mightiest departmental departure is Robert Manley, the former homerun-hitting deputy chairman of postwar and contemporary art, who after…